Yeah, Google tried it with Wave and failed miserably. E-mail is not a P2P service. For that, use any of the IM services which support P2P file transfers (e.g. XMPP). I don't want your multiple gigabyte attachments CC'd to three dozen people bogging down my mail server... you want to transfer huge amounts of data, pay for the infrastructure yourself. I have nothing personal against you, Thom, but as a mail admin myself, I know how this would end up being used.

"I don't want your multiple gigabyte attachments CC'd to three dozen people bogging down my mail server... you want to transfer huge amounts of data, pay for the infrastructure yourself. I have nothing personal against you, Thom, but as a mail admin myself, I know how this would end up being used."

Unless I'm mistaken, he doesn't mean to replace SMTP with another SMTP like infrastructure, but to completely rethink email messaging as a peer to peer content distribution system with support for interpersonal messaging. Only the manifest would be routed through the mail network, but the attachments would be P2P.

People will continue to use legacy jargon such as "I've attached a large file to the email I sent you, you should get it soon".

Under the hood, the recipient client might be notified of a new message and the client could start downloading individual attachments like in bittorrent. Then, and only if it wants to, the receiving end could download the large media files directly from the sender.

This would make it far more efficient than traditional SMTP, especially with large mailing lists or repeated/reforwarded mailings. Obviously this system has slightly different semantics from than when emails are handled by SMTP servers. But the recipient's server could be configured to automatically download attachments for data retention purposes if they wanted to.

I find people don't particularly want to use email to transfer files. But email is the least common denominator approach for two arbitrary people to transfer files to each other without owning a server somewhere, it's a defacto mechanism for file transferring. And it's a natural way of attaching a message to those files as well.

I think Thom's onto something, unifying email with P2P would be a big hit if it were adopted by enough people to make it scale.

Under the hood, the recipient client might be notified of a new message and the client could start downloading individual attachments like in bittorrent. Then, and only if it wants to, the receiving end could download the large media files directly from the sender.

But that's just a fancy way of putting a link in the mail, more or less. Perhaps a neat integration of your email client with your cloud-storage. Of course, this poses all kinds of interesting design problems and opportunities for webmail.
It would need to be an out-of-band delivery unless you wanted to redesign the SMTP protocol (which isn't going to happen).

On the other hand, since Thom doesn't want to use fancy modern things like cloud storage (that are, you know, actually designed to solve this very problem) maybe he does want to redesign the protocol.

you don't need to address me by name (though I appreciate), the comments system already tells me which post you are replying to ;-)

Unless I'm mistaken, he doesn't mean to replace SMTP with another SMTP like infrastructure, but to completely rethink email messaging as a peer to peer content distribution system with support for interpersonal messaging. Only the manifest would be routed through the mail network, but the attachments would be P2P.

Try as a might, but I can't seem to find any hint of what you're describing in Thom's original comment. Seems like what he meant was very much open to the imagination of the reader (that is not to say that he doesn't have a clear picture himself, only that he didn't specify it).

People will continue to use legacy jargon such as "I've attached a large file to the email I sent you, you should get it soon".

Under the hood, the recipient client might be notified of a new message and the client could start downloading individual attachments like in bittorrent. Then, and only if it wants to, the receiving end could download the large media files directly from the sender.

This would make it far more efficient than traditional SMTP, especially with large mailing lists or repeated/reforwarded mailings. Obviously this system has slightly different semantics from than when emails are handled by SMTP servers. But the recipient's server could be configured to automatically download attachments for data retention purposes if they wanted to.

You're talking about a glorified integration between traditional MIME e-mail and a P2P or cloud-storage service (perhaps sending magnet links or some such method). That can easily be achieved using current technology. Using direct P2P, however, has a few drawbacks:

1) Currently, e-mail is send-now-read-later. Your proposed modification would break that and would require both machines to be on-line for the entire duration of the download. Also, in an era of ever increasing numbers of mobile devices which are sometimes online and sometimes offline, this requirement can really come back to haunt you.

2) Try CC'ing multiple people with such a message and be prepared to hit your upload bandwidth cap soon.

Sure, some solution can be worked out. Trouble is, getting the rest of industry on board as well. There's a good reason why we use SMTP: everybody else does.

I find people don't particularly want to use email to transfer files. But email is the least common denominator approach for two arbitrary people to transfer files to each other without owning a server somewhere, it's a defacto mechanism for file transferring. And it's a natural way of attaching a message to those files as well.

I envy the place where you work. I routinely get funny videos or stupid pictures BCC'd to dozens of people from some notorious e-mail forwarders... give them the chance and they will send you 1080p full-length video. as a result, I have to regularly vacuum my mailbox since it drives the admins crazy if you have several hundred people with mailboxes filled with several gigabytes of worthless trash...

I think Thom's onto something, unifying email with P2P would be a big hit if it were adopted by enough people to make it scale.